Credit cards, smart cards, and debit cards which are commonly referred to as charge cards for payment of commercial transactions, and personal identity cards, are provided with magnetic means such as a magnet strip or a magnetic chip for storing on the cards the details of account and/or personal information of the card owner. The information is retrieved during use by scanning or inserting the card into a card reader for payment of a variety of services or for identification purposes. The information recorded on the card may however also be accessed remotely with an RFID or similar electronic means located in the close vicinity or proximity of the card. Since the cards are always carried by the owner in the owner's wallet or purse, it is invariably freely exposed to illegal or surreptitious access of the information by some one carrying a portable RFID or similar electronic scanning device by positioning the scanning device near or in close proximity of the card owner to retrieve the information from the cards for illegal purposes such as recreating duplicate cards for illegal uses or payments. Many methods have been employed to prevent such illegal remote surreptitious retrieval of the card information. Since RFID signals can not penetrate through a shielding plate such as a metal plate or alloy plate, one method is to locate one or two shielding plates on the outer or both sides of the outermost part of the container of the cards in a wallet or purse. The shielding plate or plates would block the RFID signal from reaching the cards to access the information. However, the inclusion of shielding plates invariably renders the card container rather bulky or the physical access of the cards during use by the owner difficult.
Moreover, charge cards and identity cards are commonly contained in pockets or plastic sleeve envelopes provided in a wallet. In the case of plastic sleeve envelopes, they are clear plastic sleeve envelopes bound in a bundle or a stack manner in the wallet. One or more cards may be inserted into each sleeve envelope. In use, a required card can be removed from the particular sleeve envelope containing it. As the sleeve envelope are of the same size of the card, it is awkward and frustrating to remove the card out of the sleeve envelope or to insert it into the sleeve envelope, particularly when two or more cards are necessarily contained in each single sleeve envelope for accommodating a plurality of cards. Same problems exist when the cards are stored in pockets provided on the side panels in the wallet or inside the wallet.
Furthermore, due to the stacking or bundling of the sleeve envelopes, particularly when two or more cards are contained in each sleeve envelope or pocket, some of the cards in the stack are not readily visible since they would be sandwiched or covered completely by other cards positioned in front, behind, or on top so that often it is difficult to locate a particular card from the stack or bundle.
Hard plastic cases have also been employed for carrying the cards in a stacked manner. The cards must all be removed simultaneously from such a hard case for selecting a particular card required during use and that the simultaneous removal of all the cards are susceptible to accidental misplacement and loss of the removed cards. Moreover, most such plastic cases are provided with a cover which is held in the closed position with a latch, or the case consists of two half cases held together with a latch. Such cases are difficult or unwieldy to operate and requiring the user to operate it with both hands.